Tempering Pottery Clay - the Secret to Mixing Wild Clay 

That's how it was when my kids were young too. Exploring the southern Arizona back roads and finding clay and minerals for pottery. Good times!

DIY making your own caly RU-vid dry to wet

Easy way to make clay at home RU-vid

@@eddiegriffin5603 POV: you forgot to click on the search bar. Still not as bad as the time I forgot to click on Incognito Mode

@@Tomartyr ☠️

Glad you like them! Keep watching.

That’s cool, I don’t think I have ever heard of using cattail fluff as temper.

I may try this

Whoa, cool idea! How did you figure out to start doing that?

@@overratedprogrammer how did it work

Wonderful, I am glad my videos have been able to provide some inspiration. I would love to see some of that ancient Costa Rican pottery.

Thanks Kenneth! I guess real experience shows.

Interesting, I hope that clay works out for you. Try levigation to refine that clay and remove all sand and other impurities. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aryqJ5I3f2Q.html

Awesome, I am glad to provide a little inspiration. Keep at it, it sometimes takes awhile to get right.

You are welcome. Thanks for the shining endorsement.

It probably is the missing ingredient.

Sounds like some good clay there. Thanks for watching.

HaHa, thanks!

Glad you are watching my videos. You might find a lot of fun activities to do in the desert.

Everybody has to start somewhere, we all crawl before we can run. No glaze on primitive pottery, you can't melt glaze without a proper kiln anyway. I have other videos about decorating, sealing and using pottery like this.

I was touched by your tale of your "sad" little pot. I'm curious whether you continued the endeavor and have created anything you feel better about. Blessings!

@@GrannyGooseOnRU-vid I'm honored that I caught your attention! So this sad pot, I laugh at it. I mean I'm not ashamed of it at all. I'm all about starting a new hobby and just seeing where it leads. For a first time self led project it worked. My interest in this hobby was cost focused, meaning I did not want to dump any money into it. The idea of taking DIRT and making a thing out it for NOTHING just excited me to no end. I had been doing some yard work (building a pond..another hobby I wish I was better at) and had dirt by the pile. So I said "I think I can do this." The result was the little pot. It's like an ash tray. I just couldn't get the clay to stack up. I couldn't get it vertical. I did indeed try some other objects based on RU-vid videos. I was trying for a coffee cup, or just something with some vertical height. I experimented with clay dryness and non-coil based methods. I was just making stuff up. Most of those things did not survive the subsequent fire. However, my daugher saw me playing with the mud and I showed her what I was doing. My 14 year old daughter would throughout the summer process dirt into clay and she made teddy bears. They didn't make it through the fire either but only because she was using large plops of clay for the body and thinner peices for arms and legs. I think she suffered from clay moisture issues too. Or maybe the purity of our clay wasn't up to snuff. But we had some bonding moments over DIRT...for FREE! I'm pretty happy with that. I might try some more next summer. Its so cold now (November) in Salt Lake. I was considering buying a lump of clay from Hobby Lobby just to have a reference of what commercial clay feels like. But that's money which makes me second guess. I'll start buying wheels and parts and I'm worried it will just become wasteful financially if I start down that route. But we'll see what next summer holds for us. I researched glaze and understand it better. I don't think that's my game at all. I'd be thrilled if I made a simple little useable flower vase. My wife might get a kick out of that. I would for sure. Thanks for your interest in my sad little pot. I'll have to post a picture of it. A 2nd grader would laugh at it I'm proud of it. It's a thing I made...for nothing! That's cool!

Sounds perfect. Thanks for watching.

Glad to lighten your day.

Thank you Rob

Glad you liked it.

Very welcome

Awesome, thank you!

I appreciate your viewership.

Thanks! Will do!

Thank you!

Glad you think so!

Awesome, thank you!

You are so welcome!

Go for it.

Thanks! That sounds like a fun adventure, I have an RV but don't get out as often as I would like.

Thank you so much.

Glad to help

Glad you enjoyed it, you are welcome.

Thank you.

So glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it.

@@AncientPottery My little Pottery studio is almost complete, we found lots of red clay on our land, so i'm going to be signing up for your online classes soon - can't wait! I'm going to have to learn about available natural pigments in the Kentucky Tennessee area.

Glad it was helpful!

You're welcome 😊

That's awesome. I hope it is volcanic ash, that is much rarer than good clay.

Awesome, thank you and keep up the good work.

Yes, I use ground up pottery too, it makes a great temper.

Thanks. I want to keep it fresh.

I do my best, thanks

@@AncientPottery you make me hapyy

Sand is good. Thanks for sharing your preferred temper.

Cool

That's great, that kind of clay is called "self tempered"

Good to hear you are making progress. What is "the mincer"? You are welcome.

The mincer is my version of a corn grinder. Bought it in an op shop many years ago. I have discovered it grinds dry clay. When I grind wet clay I am getting a shortcake effect. It sticks together but doesn’t have as much plasticity as I would like it to have. I guess it is because the clay has been fired. Maybe I can mix it with some unfired clay. Still working on it.

Thanks. I only know what I have been told having never examined sand under a microscope. That river sand is rounded like river rocks and that it is more effective as temper if it is ground on a metate first to "sharpen" it. Perhaps we are talking shades of grey here, that wind blown sand is far more polished and therefore even less effective. I don't see much wind blown sand around here, the Sonoran Desert where I live is not the kind with dunes.

Andy, great content. Don’t you find particles of caliche in your sand. Isn’t that an issue sourcing temper?

True. But if I add 20% temper to an unrefined clay and it works fine for me, do I really care what the total amount of temper is?

Thanks for sharing about your temper. Here where I live the firing temps were low and a lot of the pottery was made with calcium carbonate in it which was not much of a problem with those low temps. Up in the northern southwest their firing temps were much higher so they had to be more careful what they added up there.

Thank you for that! I have fine red ochre in my area!

Sounds great!

It cracked as expected. I will add 20 percent sand to the next batch and test again :)

Thanks

Awesome, I hope it works out for you, glad I could help.

AngelLynette: Did you have a chance to try your clay body out in a project yet?

Thanks, have fun playing with your mud

@@AncientPottery I fired my first piece in my wood burning stove last night. It definately fits into the pencil holder/ashtray category but it is definitely ceramic. It came out a tera cotta red color. I could definitely make bricks with it. Obviously it needs temper but I expected that. It was a good trial run. At one point it turned entirely black and then got lighter. That could either have been reduction or maybe the volitiles burning off. I'm not sure. I got to see it glowing red and everything. It was a really neat experience.

@@rehoboth_farm Glad to hear it. The dark color was the carbon, it starts burning off over about 650 C

Sound like this would work. I'm sure there are many ways to do it.

Maybe, the trick is to add it at just the right point when it isn't too thin so the temper goes to the bottom and not too thick so it doesn't blend well.

That's cool. I have a friend who has been running firing tests on a lot of wild clays and a couple of my favorites have gone all the way to cone 04 so you never know what a wild clay can do until you try.

You are so welcome

I hope you have successful first firing.

How did it come out? I find I need to wash beach sand very well first, else it has too much salt and causes blowups when fired.

Note Andy's comment further down, "I would be carful with beach sand, shells are calcium which could cause spalls in your pottery. It can be used if you keep the firing temp below 840 C." Maybe it is the calcium, not the salt, that is giving me problems.

@@ginikeating5104 I was referring to freshwater beach sand which is not calcarius. It fired perfectly.

Yeah that granite dust might work great. I have collected decomposed granite and ground it up for temper in the past and that worked well.

Maybe if your clay is full of sand and roots it would be good to run it through screen to remove some of that. Just a thought, every clay is different.

@@AncientPottery Ive thoroughly screened it and I'm now down to levigating to remove sediment. I have one batch ready to dry(still in suspension, but pretty refined). That batch was from about 4' down and wasn't too dirty. The other batch is still very sandy(slip feels gritty). I think what I may do, is draw off a bit from each and see which behaves better. I haven't done ceramics in decades and that was of course, with commercial products and an electric kiln. Not quite the same thing. Another question... I too have an old corn grinder that as a kid, we used to grind glass with. That got me wondering if ground glass would be useful as a temper? It seems to meet the requirements.

I wonder why you think that is the case? North Carolina is famous for its abundance of good natural clay and it's not in a desert. I don't think deserts are predisposed to more clay than any place else. Thanks!

@@AncientPottery sorry ! I thought it was a desert ! My bad. I live in an area surrounded by forests so it is a bit harder to find sand but your videos really made me realize how much clay there was around me.

I don't know how I would quantify it, but just think about it, any little root or leaf in your clay burns away in the firing and leaves a void that water can use to move through the pot walls more quickly, Earthenware is by nature porous so any unsealed earthenware will do what you want, use some horse manure for temper and it may be so porous that the water doesn't stay in the pot as long as you would like.

Black walnut is a dye, in the temperatures achieved in a pottery firings all organic dyes will be burned up. There is something called organic paint used in the Southwest that uses plant material for a paint on a special kind of clay slip and theoretically walnut could be used for that as could almost any plant material. Here is a link to a video I made about organic paint ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6UjO_W85So0.html

I would start with adding 20% temper, then see if it tends to crack when it dries, if so add more.

It is a Mexican grain mill, here is a link amzn.to/3PLZ1R9

@@AncientPottery Thank you very much. I had another question regarding the addition of temper to the clay. In case of wet processing the clay, instead of adding temper when the clay is already at a plastic consistance, is it possible to add temper to the liquid clay directly? When the clay is still in the bucket, after sieving, to add dry sand or grog, mix it, and then to pour it in a fabric bag and let it dry like that? It seems easier that way, but I wonder if, when drying in the bag, the bigger particles wouldn't sink to the bottom and then the clay body would have an uneven composition? I don't know what your thoughts on that are.. thank you :D

Temper, the same as I talk about in this video. You will need to determine what temper is available to you where you live.

That sounds awesome. 1 in a million clay.

As long as you keep your firing temperature low, like below 800 C the limestone will not be a problem. That would be my best advice. Let your pots dry slowly and if they still crack try adding a little more sand. You will get this figured out. I know a guy in France who is learning from my videos and making beautiful pottery. @steve.walford1 on Instagram

Sure, any DE will work

Interesting idea. The amount of temper may effect the shrinkage rate of the clay and if that is the case then the pot would break as it shrinks at different rates when it dries.

Sounds like a fun project. Yes you can add the sand you remove back in as temper but I'm not sure that would have much impact on the color. Found glass would also work, just make sure it doesn't have sharp edges or it could be rough on your hands as you work with the clay.

You are fortunate to have such good clay available. The safest way to fire that would be in an electric kiln at a very low temperature.

Yes but beach sand is full of seashell parts which are calcium so if you use black sand you will want to keep your firing temperature below 800 C to avoid calcium spalls. This video explains the dangers of calcium ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6A3j9HKtXtQ.html

Yes, fired clay makes the best temper, grinding it up is the hardest part

Well there is a textural difference but I think a simple acid test would work. Pour a little vinegar on it, caliche will fizz and diatomite should not.

Thank you so much hopefully this helps others as well in their quest for great clay. I'm going to take a trip tomorrow to test a deposit that I found that I wasn't entirely sure of so I passed on it.

Temper prevents drying cracks and protects the pot from thermal shock in the firing. So it has two purposes that are not done until after the fire.

@@AncientPottery I suppose that as the particles melt and sinter together they exert a contracting force that the temper resists? Always curious about the physics/chemistry underneath.

HA Ha! Glad you are enjoying it.

That is an interesting idea but having never heard of doing this or even thought about it before, I have no idea.

It can be, but be cautious. Beach sand can be salty so if it is, rinse it in fresh water to get rid of some of the salt. Also beware of seashells and even tiny bits of seashells, they are calcium and can cause pops in your pottery, so if you have any seashells in your sand keep the firing temperature below 840 C to avoid problems.

No, you never want gypsum in your clay because it will turn into plaster of paris when the pot is fired , then when it gets damp will cause spalls.

I’m sure coffee grounds would work although it would result in porous pottery.

@@AncientPottery thank you

Paper could work but I would think it would need to be shredded pretty fine before it was mixed with the clay.

Beach sand is often full of calcium from seashells so that can be a problem.

Probably but they are high in calcium so not sure about the results.

Yes, it would work.

Yes, obsidian can be used.

I would be carful with beach sand, shells are calcium which could cause spalls in your pottery. It can be used if you keep the firing temp below 840 C

Volcanic ash is just stone that has been blasted to powder by a volcano. Wood ash is organic and is totally different and not suitable for temper. Silica sand is great and so is DE.

@@AncientPottery Ah, that makes sense. Thank you!

There's the original Primitive Technology youtuber who uses fire ash and crushed stones to his clay. Then he tried just using ash and it worked really well.

@@Time.and.Spoons the crap he makes from wood ash is not pottery. Pottery is ceramic, that is more like making a pot from plaster.

Egg shells? Be careful as those are calcium and can cause spalls.

@@AncientPottery so far so good no brakes yet

You don't, you can only use dry processing for clays that are rather pure to start with.

Your clay is what is called "short" or "lean" it is lacking in plasticity. You need to watch this video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VdkjntdO4G0.html

@@AncientPottery Thank you for your quick reply and the amazing content on your channel. I watched the video you suggested. I've already done the water processing twice, so maybe the clay I collected just isn't good enough, but I've got another batch hanging in cloth outside. If I experience the same issue, I guess I'll try abd find a new source. If the clay I collected is no good for pottery, I'll use it to make an adobe kiln instead of just mud. Once again, thank you for your very quick response and thank you for your very informative videos.